I received an email this week, a journo from The Australian wanting to hear my expert academic opinion on contemporary travel memoir. Word must have got out about my PDF-making talents. "Dear Professor Harlot", he began. That'll be Dame Her Holiness the Vice-Chancellor Harlot to you, sir. If you're going to do titles, you should do 'em in style.
The last travel memoir I managed to read (not counting my cousin's, or my cousin's partner's [not that my cousin's partner would know me from a bar of soap, or chalk, or cheese]) was Charlie Darwin's, and a ripping good yarn it was too. But contemporary? Non. Do I let that stand in the way of a 1500 word waffle on the subject? Non. I may not be well read in contemporary travel memoir, but I got 'pinions, sir, and I'm not afraid to use them. I'm looking forward to the headlines: "Academic expert: Darwin invented travel memoir".
9 comments:
We have the devil of time at work every few months trying to work out whether your cousins partner's surname is to be 'Mac' or 'Mcd'. Various authorities can't seem to agree on the matter.
I note that on the cover of that book it's Mac, with an A.
Possibly she lost the 'a' in her travels, and was so traumatised by the experience she had to write some memoirs about it.
You'd think that the nation that invented the telephone - not to mention the haggis - could come up with a consistent version of its preferred surname prefix.
A friend of mine apparently shares a name with a 'celebrity stylist' (who, presumably, constructs celebrities out of spare parts), and so occasionally is called upon by various news outlets for an "expert opinion" on Why Celebrity X Is Wearing Those Jeans With Those Breast Implants When They Blatantly Don't Match.
As said friend is a Gender Studies major, the responses tend to be rather unimpressed, shall we say.
(I am back in Straya, and am also deeply unimpressed by the weather's insistence on being COLD.)
Welcome back to the old country, Jennifer! So pleased to hear that the Untied Kingdom let you home again. Yes, the weather be bracing, but give it a month or four and you-know-what. A team of wild iceburgs won't be enough to cool you down.
For a few years in the 80s, the director of the NSW water board had the audacity to pinch me dad's name. Every saturday morning pa'd have to fend off callers wanting to know what he was going to do about the sewerage. A less scrupulous person (i.e., me) could have had a lot of fun.
waffles. my favourite. with treacle, and a really runny bad travel blog.
Gosh. Waffles. Why do we waste our time with all that healthy rubbish?
Here's a travel memoir you may not have heard of.
One of man's greatest inventions, armchair travelling. I have it down to a fine art and I can now add cyberstalking to that as I follow my beloved cousin around the world. He's just been to Santorini and did not bring me back a piece of rock for which he will be punished.
I agree with you on going for it in regard to titles. I have arranged to have my Readings catalogue sent addressed to "Saint..."
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